2020 is almost in the rearview mirror. This is a great time of year to get photos of birds at Ding. If you are lucky, you’ll happen upon a feeding frenzy with lots of white birds squawking and dipping into the water to scoop up minnows and other small fish. But first, here are the birds we saw prior to getting to the frenzy.

I love those double-crested cormorant eyes . . .

We watched a great blue heron fly over and grab this big fish. He turned around and took it over to a sand bar.

He placed the fish on the sand bar and took a step back. The fish flopped its tail a couple of times. The great blue heron gave himself a good shake. He looked at the fish again, then turned and walked away. It appeared that the heron knew that the fish was probably sick, most likely with red tide poisoning.

Those are some seriously orange feet!!

Lots of white pelicans around Ding right now. This one got up close and personal with us.

A Tri-Colored Heron and an Anhinga can usually be spotted at Ding.

So many white birds everywhere, even overhead

Then we came around a bend in the road to see hundreds of white birds in their feeding frenzy. I whittled down the several hundred photos that I took, to about 27, but it took me a couple of days to get through them all. The sun was very bright and the water looks different depending on the direction I faced when I took the photo. But, I took all the photos standing in one spot. So many snowy egrets in one location.

The egrets zig zag across the water, dragging their feet and will dip their head down to grab a minnow or small fish.

Once they dart out and grab a fish, they go back to perch at the water’s edge or in a tree. Then, they will go again.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the egret below caught something bigger than a minnow.

Showing off the catch!

They look like they might hold up score cards on that one.

Dragging my feet to work on Monday morning . . .

One lone wood stork wading around looking for breakfast